Tag Archives: Year of Biblical Womanhood

Any woman who’s spent fifteen seconds or longer around evangelical culture has most definitely heard of the Proverbs 31 woman. She’s usually spoken of in a reverential, if slightly judgey, sort of way.

If her name is being hallowed by high school or college girls – then she is a heroine to whom we should aspire.

To slightly older women, she becomes the impeccable wife-mother combo, exemplifying everything we have not been able to obtain thus far in our journey to perfect womanhood.

She is respected for all of the plates she is said to have kept spinning. She is hated because somehow word has gotten out to the boys that they should expect nothing less of their sisters, girlfriends, and wives than the fantasticness that is the Proverbs 31 woman. After we first hear about this poetic woman, the rest of the female world is destined to a sense of failure as they read the last chapter in the book of wisdom.

It’s a shocking relief to us guilt-ridden women that “in Jewish culture it is not the women who memorize Proverbs 31, but the men. Husbands commit each line of the poem to memory, so they can recite it to their wives at the Sabbath meal, usually in a song” (A Year of Biblical Womanhood, 88). This is most biblical, since “The only instructive language [the poem] contains is directed toward men, with the admonition that a thankful husband honor his wife ‘for all that her hands have done’ (Proverbs 31:31)” (76).

The Proverbs 31 is called eshet chayil in the poem, which means “valorous woman”. Military connotations are appropriate because “the structure and dictation employed in the poem closely resembles that of a heroic poem celebrating the exploits of a warrior” (75). The poem we have turned into a job description was actually intended as a celebration of all that a wise woman does. The poem is meant as a blessing.

And so, this morning, I want to celebrate the exploits of an eshet chayil – the valorous woman who raised me. Today is my mom’s birthday and to her, I say…

For questioning and learning and growing in your faith so that my sister and I were encouraged to do the same – thank you. Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

For making sure that my sister and I were always hearing Scripture, always reading about heroes of the faith, always prayed for – thank you. Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

For all of the sermons and prayer meetings and Bible studies you couldn’t pay attention in because you were making sure we learned how to sit still and pay attention in church – thank you. Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

For all of the opportunities you missed, the time spent teaching us, for the tears you cried when your stubborn daughters just wouldn’t listen – thank you. Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

For all of the meals cooked, the pots scrubbed, the boo-boos kissed – thank you. Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

For all of the moments of grace, your unending forgiveness, the ways you have embodied wisdom to your family and to those around you – thank you.

Happy birthday, eshet chayil.

***

Is there a woman of valor in your life you should call and bless with the celebratory title eshet chayil?

It’s a sad fact, but true, that we must hear seven pieces of encouragement to drown out one cutting remark. That good words must work seven times harder than negative words. That we are seven times more likely to believe in our worthlessness than our worth.

Which is one of the reasons why, when reading books like Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood, I find myself choking up and laughing in relief all at the same time. It may seem odd that I am a person who needs the freedom so richly expressed by Rachel’s solid arguments and fanciful experiments.

I grew up knowing I should follow God’s call on my life – whatever that was, even though I was a girl. I was never told not to teach, or question, or study theology. I had male and female teachers in church. We read books about the male and female heroes of the faith.

Even in the strictly complimentarian Bible college I attended, there were professors who didn’t tow the “company line”. Male professors who took the questions and callings of their female students just as seriously as their male ones. Female professors who – while unable to formally teach a theology class – taught us about God and humanity, grace and redemption just the same in their communication, education, and science classes.

As far as bad experiences for women in the church go – I have had very few negative stories.

But then there’s that pesky 7-to-1 ratio.

And where there is one comment to the effect that a woman’s highest calling is motherhood, there must be seven reminders that just because I am not a mother doesn’t mean I’m not currently living out the world’s highest calling of following Christ.

Where there is one comment questioning the message only because SHE was the messenger, there must be seven reminders that God gives His message to whomever He decides and our only duty is to proclaim it, not change the hearers.

Where there is one warning that your failure to live up to a demure, beautiful, feminine ideal may mean your failure as a Godly woman, there must be seven reminders of God’s grace and His delight in His daughters.

If a woman has been pressed up to the false standard of biblical womanhood and critiqued for her failures in its harsh light, she must have grace and God’s loving, sure creativity pressed upon her blistered soul seven times.

In her first month of “biblical womanhood”, Held Evans explores the virtue of gentleness. During the month, she is ruthless with herself about any “contentious” speech – which means (among other things) gossip, complaint, and snarky remarks. She studies the story of Miriam’s criticism of Moses’ wife. Miriam was struck with a skin disease for her sin of loshon hara – “evil speech”.

Researching the Hebrew words loshon hara, Held Evans comes across a saying from the Talmud. That “loshon hara kills three people: the one who speaks it, the one who hears it, and the one about whom it is told”. Questioning the seeming hyperbolic use of “kill”, Held Evans considers the damage our words have done and can do to one another and concludes “violent language is appropriate” (10).

With a word we can kill one another. With a few more words, we can resuscitate one another.

The words in A Year of Biblical Womanhood are resuscitative.

***

And to three of you, I’ll be sending a copy of A Year of Biblical Womanhood! All the names of people who entered went on slips of paper and my dad (who didn’t know what he was doing!) picked out three names. The lucky winners are:

Does a “biblical woman” work outside the home or exclusively inside of it?
Yes.

Does a “biblical woman” homeschool her kids or send them to public school?
Yep.

Does a “biblical woman” lead from upfront in her church or serve quietly behind the scenes?
Absolutely.

Does a “biblical woman” vote Republican or Democrat?
Yes, she does.

A biblical woman is living into her God-given calling, learning every day to be more Christ-like, laying her background, personality, education, and skills at the feet of Jesus and seeing what He does with who she is.

Which means sometimes she sits in silence hearing what the Spirit says and sometimes she stands to speak truth with passion. She can be found married, or single-and-hoping-for-marriage, or committed to being single. She can be found voting for Republicans and Democrats and Independents and the Green Party. She can be found in Baptist churches and Methodist, Anglican and Catholic, Mennonite and Pentecostal. And in those churches, she can sometimes be found in the pew and sometimes found in the pulpit.

How can this be? How can all of these different sorts of women be in the same box” labeled “biblical”? Isn’t there one model of how to do this thing called womanhood correctly?

“The Bible does not present us with a single model for womanhood, and the notion that it contains a sort of one-size-fits-all formula for how to be a woman of faith is a myth.
Among the women praised in Scripture are warriors, widows, slaves, sister wives, apostles, teachers, concubines, queens, foreigners, prostitutes, prophets, mothers, and martyrs… they lived their lives with valor. They lived their lives with faith.” (295)